G’day team, this week we catch up on the last World Cup race in Plouay! We also find out how the rest of the Trophee d’Or went and we discuss a bunch of news and announcements from teams, riders and the UCI. There’s a heap of great videos down below and a lot of exciting stuff. Sit back, crack a cold one and ignore the other commuters on the bus/train, and enjoy! (1:00:51 MIN / 58.43 MB)

We were hoping to podcast this week because SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT!!! Good and bad and WOW DID YOU SEE THE USA NATIONAL CHAMPS’ FINISH??? but poor Dan has tonsils the size of golf balls, and can’t really speak properly, so he can’t do it. If you want to wish him lots of love and “get well soon” wishes, please do so on twitter – but in the meantime, here are the links from the last week in women’s cycling – we’ve got amazing MTB and road racing, and links that made me laugh and want to punch things, so pretty much something for everyone…..

Last week’s racing

Where better to start than with the first round of the 2015 XCo World Cup? I say this a lot, but Red Bull‘s sponsorship makes it really easy to fall in love with the racing, and there are tons of team and rider media and blogs that keep you there. You can watch the entire replay of the women’s race on Red Bull TV, and then we have highlights and team recaps…

So, usually in the week after a Road World Cup, I’d be putting up the 26 minute UCI highlights video, having already put up a post with their short highlights video and photos, race reports and more the day after the race. But, while it was the 2015 Tour of ChongMing Island World Cup on Sunday, we won’t be having anything from the UCI this year. Why? I have no idea. They gave us all of that last year, and a short video in 2013, so if you want to see any moving images from this year’s race, all you can do is look at Wiggle Honda’s video.

It’s frustrating, because while the UCI talks about how women’s cycling media is their priority, but so far this year we’ve much had less overall than we did last year, even when eg the Ronde van Drenthe was streamed in Dutch. And it’s especially frustrating, because ChongMing, being in China, is so much harder to get information on than the other rounds, and has additional obstacles for teams racing there, from travel and visa issues through to riders having to be hyper-vigilant not to eat contaminated meat. I have to wonder why the UCI think teams will continue to go through all of that to race there, when even the governing body has the race on a lower tier than all the other World Cup. Sure, there are points, but ChongMing never impacts on the overall World Cup which is, I’m sure, a reason why teams like Boels-Dolmans, Rabo-Liv, Velocio-SRAM, Liv-Plantur and ORICA-AIS skipped it this year.

I decided this was the best time to retell what happened after my latest phone conversion with the UCI, which has kind of concluded the case. I was advised that taking legal action against my former team would be costly and high risk and simply not worth doing seeing as I already have missed nine months salary. So that option has gone. As this has taken so long, my second option to pursue payment via the UCI Bank Guarantee put in place under the UCI rules was also not an option, as that has now expired. In any case, the UCI informed me it was likely the bank guarantee for the team was never in fact set up and even if it was, it is so difficult to communicate with the Mexican Federation and the fact that there be other creditors owed this money, that this isn’t really an option and that is impossible to receive.

Ugh. So much wrong with this – the only bright spot is how impressed I am with Lucy for speaking out, because as I’ve written before, there is huge pressure on riders to keep quiet when they’re exploited (and not only financially, but also sexually, I’m still horrified about that), and last year was at least the third year I’d heard rumours that riders on a Faren team were unpaid.

So, I think I’ll stop typing now, because it’s all so depressing. There are bright spots – confusedspider just pointed out there are 2015 RaboLiv videos on vimeo that I hadn’t known about, and there’s some great racing set to be streamed, or watched on replay this week – crits and MTB – and on Monday there’s live video from the USA National Championships. So it always could be worse! But still, if you want me, I’ll be the one in the corner with my head under a blanket, feeling miserable.